The approach to landing and touch down on the runway of an aircraft is probably the most challenging task a pilot undertakes during normal operation. To perform the landing properly, the aircraft approaches the runway within an envelope of attitude, course, speed, and rate of descent limits. The course limits include, for example, both lateral limits and glide slope limits. An approach outside of this envelope can result in an undesirable positioning of the aircraft with respect to the runway, resulting in possibly discontinuance of the landing attempt.
Whether using advanced instruments or acquiring the runway visually, the pilot is provided or determines the runway threshold (end of the usable runway) and aiming point (for the aircraft). The aiming point is further down the runway so the runway between the threshold and the aiming point is available for touchdown in case the pilot undershoots the aiming point.
Synthetic vision systems are currently certified for situation awareness purposes in commercial and business aviation applications with no additional landing credit for going below published minimum. Such a display system, when used in conjunction with Enhanced Vision Systems, is known to improve a pilot's overall situational awareness and reduce flight technical errors.
NOTAMs bring information about sudden/immediate changes and temporary changes that will exist for a short time only. The legacy NOTAM messages (the current system of a text note which can be distributed by basic teletype networks such as the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network) largely escape the digital processing data chain and as a result the contents of a database on-board the aircraft may be incorrect (superseded by NOTAM). Display Systems such as the Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS), Airport Moving Maps, top down and side view maps may not be displaying up to date or complete data. Furthermore, current Advisory and Warning systems like Smart Landing/RAAS may mislead the pilot based on database information on which they provide an alert due to not being in sync with the temporary NOTAM, and for not considering the full runway length available in accordance with the airport database, and therefore, will raise an alert when the pilot tries the new computed aiming point. In doing so, the display is providing misleading or incomplete data to the pilot. If the threshold of the runway is temporarily displaced, the display still continues to show full runway length available. Though the information might be available through ATIS or even Digital NOTAMs on a separate display, there are quite a few opportunities for the pilot to miss the data.
Pilot workload is increased as he has to take a note of this or visualize the effect of the change. For example, manufactures of SVS systems are seeking lower landing minima (Operational Credit) using improved symbology. When the aircraft is on the approach path with SV terrain on, the pilot can visually use the flight path symbol (FPS) and flight director (FD) alignment with the aiming point markers of the arrival runway to verify that the aircraft continues to move towards that point of runway during the approach. However, if the runway threshold is displaced by a NOTAM, the pilot will need to mentally visualize where the aiming point markers will now be depicted based on the NOTAM, which not only increases the pilot work load, the pilot estimate of aiming point markers may not be accurate. In the worst case, the pilot may aim at the original aiming point markers if he missed the NOTAM. This may put the aircraft glide path in the way of obstructions or the aircraft may land on the part of the runway that is not capable of handling aircraft landings. Therefore, depicting the Actual runway (incorporating the NOTAM changes) and notifying the pilot that the information came from a NOTAM is all the more important for SVS. NOTAMs are often hard to read and sometimes there are so many of them that don't apply to pilots that they just ignore all of them. Failure to get the current pertinent NOTAMs may result in undesired results.
NOTAMs provide information about immediate and temporary changes. Determining which NOTAM is applicable to a given flight typically is not easy and requires a major effort on the part of the pilot or, in the case of airline operations, the personnel who put together the route documents for the pilot's flights.
Current display systems, for example, Synthetic Vision Systems, Airport Moving Maps, Weather displays, and Interactive Navigation systems are not displaying current data, but are displaying misleading or incomplete data to the pilot. If a runway or part of a runway is temporarily closed, the display still continues to show full runway length available for the pilot. Though the information might be available through ATIS or even Digital NOTAMs on a separate display, having the necessary information on more than one display increases the chance the pilot might not notice the information. Also pilot workload is increased as he has to take a note of the information on multiple displays and visualize the effect of the change.
The legacy NOTAM messages largely escape the digital processing data chain and as a result, the contents of a database on-board the aircraft may be ‘superseded by NOTAM’. In known systems, the task of remembering which information has been overridden becomes a task for the pilots.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system and method for improving the ability to fly low altitude, low visibility approaches including insuring accurate data input including NOTAMS to the pilot. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the exemplary embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.